Marcus Stroman Mixes His Timing to Hitters at the WBC

Marcus Stroman is one to tinker with his pitches. While some pitchers may only have two or three pitches in their back pocket, Stroman has upwards of seven. In addition to the grips he uses on the baseball, there’s one other variable he’s been playing with: timing.

In a post-game interview, Stroman himself said he “did everything in his power to change up timing” with an emphasis on “keeping the ball down and throwing off timing”. He kept the Puerto Rican hitters off-balance most of the night en route to six shutout innings of baseball.

Team Puerto Rico simply couldn’t get their timing down against Marcus Stroman because he did a phenomenal job of varying his delivery to home plate; whether it was a quick pitch, a hesitated delivery or his good old-fashioned windup.
 

Versus Carlos Correa – Hesitated Delivery

 
This was the first noticeable instance of the hesitant delivery by Marcus Stroman. It’s not unlike hesitation that Roberto Osuna worked into his delivery last season.

Just for fun, watch Carlos Correa wait patiently as he loads and then has to hold while Stroman goes through his delivery.
 

Versus Carlos Correa – Quick Pitch

 
Here, Marcus Stroman delivers his much-more refined weapon in his arsenal: the quick pitch. Stroman doesn’t rock back on his left leg and instead sort of pitches from the stretch and crosses Correa up.

Last year during Spring Training, Marcus Stroman shared that he added a quick pitch to his repertoire. It was met with mixed results during the 2016 season, but he’s peppered it back into his bag of tricks for 2017.
 

Versus Carlos Correa – Hesitated Delivery Again

 
Of all the hitters on Team Puerto Pico, Marcus Stroman seemed to pick on Carlos Correa the most. This was yet another hesitated delivery – slightly quicker than the previous iteration.
 

Versus Yadier Molina – Quick Pitch

 
This was actually the second consecutive quick pitch in this at bat to Yadier Molina. In the pitch prior, Stroman uncorked the fall even faster, which would explain how Stroman got the ball in so fast the second time.

Molina called for time but it wasn’t granted because the ball was already out of Stroman’s glove and the umpire barely had time to react to Molina’s request.
 

Versus Javier Baez – Normal Delivery

 
And just for comparison sake, a look at Marcus Stroman’s full windup against Javier Baez. Stroman used this delivery for the bulk of his pitches, but every so often, he’d mix in that quick pitch or hesitated delivery.

Footage courtesy of MLB Network